Innocent
by Absinth-and-Whisky
Summary: In which Dr. Facilier reveals something interesting. an assignment from my creative writing class


People know what I did, everyone knows what I did, but they don't understand why. Yeah, I tried to collect souls with my voodoo but there was a reason. There's always a reason. There's a reason for everything, always.

It's not my fault that I had to collect souls. It was never my fault. I was indebted to my so-called friends on the other side. They saved me, spared my life, but in return I had to help them with my magic, the magic that they made grew within me.

It made me an angry and cruel man that tricked people into relinquishing their souls.

It was terrible at first, so very terrible, but I had a job to do so I forced myself to get used to it, forced myself to just do what I had too. It started out as a simple voodoo fortuneteller scam.

And that was fine for a while. Until my friends on the other side got antsy and irritated with the few souls I was sending them, not enough and not fast enough, never enough and never fast enough. They wanted more and faster. It's hard work to collect souls, very hard.

It used to be easier when my friends were mortal, easier for them. It could all be blamed on witchcraft; which isn't all together untrue. And they could get away with it if because witchcraft is for witches, not the people they had been when they lived.

But it was harder for me, it wasn't witchcraft anymore. There were so many people that won't waste money on a voodoo witch doctor. There are just too many skeptics out there these days.

I was even running low on money. I was starving. My friends were still demanding more souls than I could give them. They didn't care that I had no way to support myself, that wasn't their problem. They only wanted the souls. That's all they needed me for.

I would have needed at least ten customers a day for I don't know how many years just to get it done before I was dead.

And that just wasn't happening. I was lucky if I got one soul a week at the rate I was going, it just wasn't working. So I started going out, traveling further into the bayou hoping to get some of the not so intelligent swamp people. That worked for getting souls but not for getting me money. They were all dirt poor, and they weren't willing to pay more than half the time, they couldn't afford it but I couldn't afford not going out there to get their souls. I couldn't afford to get out there either.

So things started to get even more strained and my soul collecting slowed down so I could focus on actually feeding myself, focus on actually keeping myself alive.

Well my friends didn't like that, not one bit.

They threatened me. I begged them to let me have some more time, begged them to listen as I told them I wasn't ignoring the debt. I told them that the task that they had given me was difficult in this day and age, that it would take time. I tired travelling further out into the bayou, then past the bayou. But the further I went the more skeptical all the people seemed to get.

So I was forced to return to New Orleans, the voodoo capital of the south, and stuck to gathering souls once a week, if I could manage it, and skulking in the alleyways in hope of finding new pray or a way to make a quick buck to feed myself.

By this point I was so used to gathering souls that it was like second nature. It was simply a thing I just had to do.

It was never fun though. I never enjoyed it. I wanted it done as fast as possible.

But then things started to get weird in my head, started to not make that much sense.

I started to enjoy the scam and the soul stealing. I would laugh and make jokes about it, talking excitedly about plans and traps and ideas with Shadow. Mean things. I started getting desperate, I think, so I started going crazy to deal with my friends nagging at me for more, more, MORE.

ALWAYS MORE!

ALWAYS FASTER!

Then I saw a chance, when the blasted prince and his little butler man showed up. Oh his butler man was madder than a wet hen to be following that prince around all over the place, he was furious at the short straw he'd drawn from the lot. He was jealous of all the riches, all the pampering that the prince got.

So I took advantage of the little man, tricked and played and manipulated him. And watched it like a movie, playing out before my eyes wonderfully.

But then things got complicated and my mind got all fuzzy and I wasn't thinking right anymore and my friends on the other side got all mad, no not mad; they were far more than mad, they were enraged.

But I thought then that if I could get this plan to work then I would finally be free from those voodoo friends on the other side and they could go curse some other man to do their dirty work, save and trick him like they did me.

But things went wrong, and my mind was all messed up and I was chasing them, but then I was being chased. And I realized that my plan would have never worked, not with the way that I had done it.

I had lost logic in my attempt to rid myself of my debt, my frenzied ploy to once again be a free man without those evil voodoo friends. I had gotten cocky with the big idea and ignored all the flaws and problems, gotten worked up and made mistakes.

And now I'm stuck with my friends on the other side.


End file.
